


Third Choice

by pertainstothesea



Series: Soulmates In the Attic [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Oblivious Jack Zimmermann™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 08:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13290576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pertainstothesea/pseuds/pertainstothesea
Summary: In the AU where you see either 1,000 roaches or a vision of your soulmate when you turn sixteen, there are only two possibilities.Jack finds the third option.





	Third Choice

Whenever two choices present themselves, it’s easy to think that those are the only options. Roaches or a soulmate vision. Going to the NHL or being a failure. Being a fat kid or being a good athlete.

Jack got good quickly at finding the third choice.

 

“You just... didn’t look?” Lardo asked. Jack shrugged. At this point, six years later, he couldn’t really explain it. When he was sixteen, everything was just so much. Too much. He was entering the Q, but the way everyone was acting it was supposed to take a backseat to the soulmate stuff. Everything was supposed to stop for some stranger. What if he was swarmed by roaches instead? What if his soulmate was someone he had nothing in common with? How would he even have time to find them and get to the NHL? Would that be fair to the soulmate? What if he was a disappointment to them?

 

His parents wouldn’t stop telling him about how they recognized each other from afar– Bob saw Alicia’s face on a billboard when she was modeling for Chanel, Alicia saw Bob doing a postgame interview on ESPN. A perfect soulmate story, another perfect thing to live up to.

 

It was just. Too much. So he didn’t. It was easier to let the questions go unanswered than to be faced with the certainty of some kind of failure.

 

It was easier to not have to keep looking for someone. 

 

It was easier to assume there had been roaches.

 

“So like, doesn’t that make you super vulnerable? What if I showed up and I was all like ‘hey rich and famous hockey player, you’re definitely my soulmate, don’t sign a prenup’? Would you just go along with it?” Lardo asked, concern creeping into the joke.

 

“You’ve shown me the drawing you made of your vision, Shitty and I look nothing alike.” Lardo punched him softly on the arm. “I’m just gonna keep it quiet. Maybe just try to date some people who definitely don’t have a soulmate.”

 

_X__X_ _X_

 

“Oh my god, y’all, I just had my soulmate vision! I can’t wait to meet him! He’s tall, and he’s got these really blue eyes, and dark hair, and...” sixteen-year-old Eric abandoned the snickerdoodle tutorial he’d planned for his vlog, describing instead every detail he could remember about his soulmate. He proudly stood up so the camera captured his “MADISON HIGH LUCKY ’13” tshirt, explaining to his viewers that, since his soulmate would see (or would have seen– Eric had a feeling the boy he’d seen was a few years older than him) a vision of him on his sixteenth birthday, he figured he’d make himself easy to find. His bookshelf was filled with new gifts– instructions on how to find his soulmate, how to be the best soulmate and partner he could be when found, what to expect from the soulmate connection when they finally met.

 

_X__X_ _X_

 

The thing about soulmates is that there’s supposed to be a Moment. A capital-M Moment, where your eyes should meet and recognition turns to overwhelming joy, and it’s the most magical moment of your life, right ahead of the time you saw the vision of your soulmate in the first place.

 

Eric Bittle left his first college hockey practice feeling robbed of that Moment.

 

After two years of imagining exactly how his soulmate’s blue eyes would widen in recognition, how he would sound when they introduced themselves to each other, how their first kiss would feel, he got... nothing. Jack’s eyes passed over him like Eric (or now, thanks to the magic of hockey nicknames, Bitty) was nobody. Before he could even say anything to him, Jack was gone and Bitty was in shock.

 

“Hey y’all,” he said to his camera. “I think– I think I just met my soulmate? But he can’t have been. He didn’t say anything to me. I introduced myself, and he just said his name and went to talk to the next freshman.” If Bitty was being honest with himself, Jack had been the coldest person on the team to him. He’d sized him up, but not like he was trying to match him up to the vision of sixteen-year-old Eric. Just like he was analyzing him as a part of the team. Bitty took a deep breath.

“Maybe he has a brother who looks like him, or a cousin or something. I just don’t see my soulmate acting like that.”

 

_X__X__X_

 

The key to being a good captain is knowing what everyone on the team needs to be their best. Jack half-thought that what Bittle needed was a different sport. He was terrified on the ice, then he was beyond distracted in their checking clinics. At the end of the first few practices, he asked Jack if there was anything he wanted to tell him. Jack gave him some recommendations for ways to better his workout, but the freshman seemed disappointed at the response.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

At the first checking practice, Bittle thought it would be just an excuse from Jack to talk in private. He could understand if Jack hadn’t wanted to do the whole soulmate discussion in front of the whole team. But instead they just... practiced checking. He wore the shirt (his lucky, soulmate-day shirt) to team breakfast, but Jack didn’t acknowledge it. Bitty stopped hoping for the Moment. He tried to convince himself that he had been mistaken in identifying his soulmate. He left the shirt at the back of his drawer. Ignoring it worked well enough to get through the semester.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

During the spring semester of his freshman year, Bitty decided to work on some other theories. Maybe Jack just looked like his soulmate. The way he saw it, there were two possibilities:

 

Jack was his soulmate, and his standoffishness was his way of rejecting Bitty as a soulmate

Jack wasn’t his soulmate, and there was someone out there who would still love him.

 

So he made up a statistics project. He wasn’t actually in a stats class, but nobody on the team needed to know that. The fake paper he wrote may have been the most impressive work of academia he did that semester. “Family Compositions Among Student Athletes” was a comprehensive study that revealed that Jack was an only child with no cousins. Definitely no secret identical twin. Goodbye, Alternate Theory #1.

 

Alternate Theory #2 brought him to one of the websites that were supposed to unite soulmates. He uploaded a picture of his sixteen-year-old self, the way he would have looked in the vision, filled in the characteristics he was searching for, and started looking. It wasn’t a very good search. The few guys who popped up as a potential match just didn’t come close to looking like the vision.

 

With the help of some not-super-subtle questions and Shitty, he got a picture of Jack at age sixteen. With the video that he had recorded immediately after the vision playing in the background, Bitty drew two conclusions.

 

Jack was definitely his soulmate.

Jack had definitely rejected him.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

Jack didn’t get why Bitty was surprised that he checked on him during the summer after the concussion. 

 

_You’re my teammate. I’ve got your back, Bittle._

 

_but like.... why now_

 

_I always help my teammates when they need it. You trusted me to be captain, and I’m going to fulfill that responsibility._

 

_so this is a captain thing_

 

_Yes._

 

_k._

 

He didn’t get a reply to the articles he had sent about concussion-safe workouts for three days.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

The problem with being on the same team as his soulmate was that there wasn’t really anyone for Bitty to talk to about it with. All his friends had been Jack’s friends first– how could he expect them to have any sympathy for him over Jack?

 

It was jarring how easily Jack could treat him like any other friend from the start, but Bitty felt like he had it on lock by fall semester of his sophomore year. He carefully made Jack the exact same number of baked goods as he made every other person on the team. Not more, revealing that part of him was still falling in love with Jack. Not less, revealing how much he wanted to just ignore Jack as much as Jack was ignoring him.

 

Bitty had been carefully maintaining the same hairstyle since he was sixteen. Looking the same meant that his soulmate would have an easier time finding him. As he sat in the barber’s chair, listening to the shears as they trimmed down the sides of his hair, it felt like a release. He wasn’t going to wait for a soulmate who didn’t want him. When he got back to the Haus, he couldn’t tell if Jack was making fun of him or complimenting him when he told him his hair looked good. Was he approving of Bitty moving on?

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

Bittle’s hair looked nice. Jack complimented his friends when they looked nice, okay? He wasn’t going to go around getting feelings for underclassmen. That would be inappropriate as the captain. Besides, Bitty had a soulmate out there waiting for him.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

“Some of y’all have been asking about the whole soulmate situation. I have to be honest, I’d rather eat my Moomaw’s pie tin than think about him. Unfortunately, I’m in a situation where I have to spend all my damn time around the team, so he’s always in my space. Sometimes it’s almost like he’s flirting with me. How does he think that’s okay? Like, don’t ignore your soulmate and then tell them their squats are working. But then it’s also like, ‘Eric, you idiot, stop falling for him, stop making him maple-flavored everything, real maple syrup is ridiculously expensive and he’s not worth it.’ I’m just trying not to have feelings about anything here. I’ll let y’all know how that works out next week, when I’ll be making salted caramel brownies that actually have a balanced set of flavors.”

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

Jack’s crush on Bitty was getting harder to ignore. It was like he was drawn to him inexorably, so slowly that he didn’t know it was happening until it was too late. He woke up one day with the knowledge that he was in love. But Bitty probably had a soulmate out there waiting. It wouldn’t be fair to Bitty or his soulmate for Jack to interfere.

 

If he couldn’t stop himself sometimes from complimenting Bittle, or volunteering to carry 

him home from Spring C, or spending time in the kitchen, well, hopefully Bittle didn’t mind too much.

 

_X_ _X__X_

 

It wasn’t worth it, Bitty told himself. But somehow it was hard to resist slipping Jack a few extra cookies when he gushed over a new recipe. And it was deliriously tempting to pretend things were different when Jack was carrying him when he lost a shoe, to act like they were normal soulmates who could date each other and be silly and in love.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

On the rooftop of Faber, when the seniors had bid goodbye to the ice, the conversation turned as most late-night conversations did to soulmates. Ransom and Holster described again how they saw each other for the first time at the Tadpole Tour. Lardo made them laugh by telling how she didn’t recognize Shitty at first, his long hair, stache, and style so different from his 16 year old persona. Then she turned to Bitty.

 

“What about you, Bits? What’s your soulmate like?” 

 

He pointedly made an effort to not look towards Jack.

 

“I’ve met him already,” he managed to say. “And he barely acknowledged me. He just acted like I was any old stranger. Never said a word about being soulmates,” he continued, blinking a couple times to keep his tears at bay, “so I feel safe in saying that I was pretty strongly rejected.” His friends murmured their sympathies, which was nice even if they could never understand what it was like.

 

“Anyone who would do that to you is an idiot,” Jack, of all people, said, his voice filled with false sympathy. Bitty pressed his lips into a thin line and glared. If it was bad that Jack could pretend to not be his soulmate so easily, it was worse when he said shit like that. The mockery on top of the rejection stung too hard.

 

“I’ll say so,” he snapped. “You know what, I’m going back home. Don’t–” he said as Jack moved to get up, shrugging off the borrowed jacket and throwing it in Jack’s direction. “I need to be alone.”

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

Watching Bittle leave, Jack felt a strange combination of sympathy and hope. The thought of someone rejecting his friend was terrible, but if Bitty wasn’t holding out for a soulmate–

Maybe there had been roaches waiting for Jack, maybe there had been a soulmate, but either way, if he dated Bitty, he wouldn’t be robbing him of his soulmate. The crush he’d been trying to ignore for months could be a reality.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

Bitty reached out and straightened Jack’s tie. For a moment he pretended that he could have that, that he could just be with his soulmate, celebrating a happy milestone. That he’d ever had a chance. He took a deep breath.

 

“Guess the next time I see you, you’ll be on TV,” he said shakily. It was a lie. He was going to leave the room every time a Falconers game came on if he had any choice in the matter. He’d stop hoping, move on for real this time.

 

“It’s only a forty minute drive,” Jack replied. Like he was going to keep making Bitty pretend everything was fine forever. Bitty meant to say something friendly, something that would reassure Jack that he wasn’t going to hold this against him.

 

“What do I have to do to earn an explanation?” he demanded instead. He hadn’t planned on saying what he’d been thinking for ages.

 

“An explanation for what?” Jack asked, looking almost believably confused. Something in Bitty broke.

 

“Fuck you, Zimmermann. You can’t– you can’t do this. You can’t break my heart every day for two years and then turn around and pretend to be nice. I’m worth more than that, I’m done, have a nice life,” he said, cutting himself off with a shaky sob. He turned from Jack’s shocked face and pushed through the crowd. As soon as there were few enough people around, he broke into a run back to the Haus. His dress shoes pinched at his feet and his muscles burned, but it was a good distraction from his tears.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

“What was that about?” Jack’s dad asked, coming over to where Jack still stood staring at where Bittle had just run away.

“I don’t know? All of a sudden he was just crying and angry.”

“He’s the one you like, right? Go after him.”

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

“Bittle. What was that?” Jack demanded. Bitty just sighed. He was sitting on the end of his bed, looking down at his phone, his feet resting on his suitcase. He swung his legs down to the floor and looked past Jack into the hallway.

 

“I had just kept hoping... in the back of my mind... maybe you were one of those people who wanted to let their feelings grow slowly? Which could have been fine! I would have liked it stated at some point early on, but it could have been fine. But then today it just all hit me that you were graduating and moving away, and you still hadn’t said anything, and I can’t keep hoping in spite of myself anymore.” He looked at Jack, tired and broken. “I’m not sorry for getting mad. I deserve feelings.”

 

Jack furrowed his brow. “You’re mad I didn’t say anything about my crush on you? I was going to–”

 

Bitty looked at him, eyebrow raised and lips pressed tightly together. “This is a new low, Jack. Can you stop pretending, just for a second?”

 

“Pretending what?” Jack asked, more confused than ever.

 

“Pretending that we’re not soulmates and that you didn’t fucking reject me every day since we met!” Bittle shouted, standing up. “So you can stop making fun of me by acting like you care!” He shoved past Jack and across the hall, shoving his phone into his pocket and pouncing on a pile of Chowder’s shirts next to the bed. He started robotically folding, setting them into a neat stack on the empty mattress. “I need something to do with my hands when I’m upset, not that you care,” he said in response to Jack’s stunned silence.

 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked softly. Bittle didn’t respond. “Bits, please, why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“Tell you what?”

 

“That we’re soulmates!” 

 

“I shouldn’t have needed to say anything, I looked exactly the same,” Bitty said slowly. “I kept the same outfit, even, in case you had one of those face blindness disorders. Wore it in front of you five times that first semester. I need you to stop messing with me right now.”

 

“I didn’t go into the attic. When I turned sixteen, I didn’t look,” Jack confessed in a rush. He looked toward Bitty, hoping that he would understand.

 

He looked even more broken instead. “You– you’re saying that you didn’t want me even before you met me. I didn’t think it would be any worse than you deciding when you saw me that I wasn’t good enough.”

 

“Bits, it’s not like that– it was an anxiety thing, not a rejection thing.”

 

“I didn’t change my haircut for three years. I dressed so you could know where I was, where you could find me– I almost didn’t come to Samwell because I didn’t want you to go looking for me and not find me in Georgia,” Bitty said in one frantic breath. “All I wanted was for my soulmate to find me and love me back and instead I get someone who doesn’t even care enough to look? The vision isn’t about you, it’s about the other person. What if I was blind? Did you record your voice when you were sixteen so I could tell it was you? What if I couldn’t travel? You would have never found me.” He stopped suddenly. “Someone could have lied to you.”

 

Jack opened his mouth to speak, wanting to reassure him that he wouldn’t have believed a liar, but stopped. He couldn’t. A new thought brought fresh panic. He believed Bitty, he’d always believe Bitty, but what if–

 

“I’ve only told Lardo– she didn’t tell you–” he started. Bitty was looking at him with disgust.

 

“Fuck you,” Bitty spat again, “for even thinking, for even a moment, that I would lie about that. I would have been an amazing soulmate. I don’t give a shit about your family’s money.” His phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his pocket to look at the notification. “I have a plane to catch.” Jack trailed behind him as he crossed back to his own room and grabbed his suitcase, heading down the stairs to his taxi. 

 

He was silent, searching for any words to fix the situation as he followed Bitty outside.

 

“Well, I’ve got that explanation I wanted at least,” Bitty said almost to himself. He heaved the case into the trunk. “I didn’t realize I needed something else, though,” he said to Jack.

 

“What?” he asked, as Bitty slid into the backseat and reached for the door. 

 

“An apology,” Bitty said, and slammed the car door shut.

 

_X_ _X_ _X_

 

Bitty flopped onto his bed. With a sigh he pulled his phone out of his pocket and, for the first time since the plane landed, turned it on. He barely had time to scan the notification that he had dozens of missed calls from Jack before a picture of Jack filled the screen, signalling yet another one. Bitty stared at the picture while it rang, trying to figure out if he even wanted to talk to Jack. He was still upset, he was going to be upset for a long while, but the plane ride had given him time to actually process what everything meant if Jack hadn’t known. He was filled with the hollowness that comes from doing the work to emotionally process that kind of life-shaking news. Neither of the two possibilities he’d thought of when he was a freshman was the full situation. 

 

“He didn’t mean to,” he said to himself. “You can still be hurt, but he didn’t mean to hurt you.” He hit the green button to accept the call. 

 

“Bits!” Jack said. 

 

“Hi, Jack.” Bitty stared at his ceiling.

 

“I didn’t think you would pick up.”

 

“Neither did I. What is it?” 

 

“Uh, well, I texted you.”

 

“My phone’s been off. Plane ride.”

 

“Oh,” Jack said. He was quiet for a moment. “So, uh, how was your flight?”

 

“You didn’t call me that many times to ask about my flight. What is it?”

 

When he finally replied, Jack sounded small. “I know I fucked up. I want to make things better. If you’ll let me try, that is. If you really want, you can just tell me to never talk to you again and I will.”

 

Bitty thought it over. The offer would have been tempting a few hours ago. “I can’t do that.” He heard Jack breathe a sigh of relief on the other side of the phone. 

 

“So where do we go from here?” Jack asked. Bitty shrugged, then remembered Jack couldn’t see it over the phone. He took a few deep breaths, listening to the sounds of home– a chorus of frogs, the dog down the road that never stopped barking, his parents’ quiet conversation in the other room, a car engine settling into silence as someone parked on the street outside. “I still want that apology, but I guess I understand better now? Earlier I was so angry, but now... now I’m sad it took us this long to figure all this out. I hate to have this whole conversation over the phone.”

 

“Oh, well, I can fix that problem at least,” Jack says.

 

“What? Oh, no, Jack, I don’t care how many plane tickets your NHL salary can buy, you just graduated, you can stay right where you are,” Bitty admonished. Jack was quiet. Outside, Bitty heard a car door open and slam shut.

 

“Could you come downstairs? I don’t want to knock on the wrong door,” Jack said, and now Bitty could hear the doubled chorus of the neighbor’s dog as the phone picked up the sounds.

 

“You have got to be kidding me. Jack Laurent Zimmermann, we could have just facetimed!” he exclaimed, but a smile pushed its way into his voice.

 

“An apology over the phone isn’t a real apology,” Jack said. Bitty ran down the stairs and threw open the front door. Jack stood right outside the fence, in front of a nondescript rental car, still in the suit he wore to graduation. Staring at each other, they both slowly lowered their phones. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. Bits, I didn’t mean– I would never reject my soulmate on purpose. I would never– I thought you had a soulmate out there who was better than me. I didn’t know, I swear.” 

 

“I forgive you.”

 

“You don’t have to. I was serious about that.”

 

“I know.” Bitty dropped down to sit on the front step, wrapping his arms around his legs. “And maybe I shouldn’t. You’ve already hurt me so much.”

 

Jack hesitantly opened the front gate and walked down the flagstone path, then stood in front of Bitty for just a moment too long until Bitty patted the step to tell him to sit down.

 

“You’ve hurt me, but I’ve spent so much time trying to stop being in love with you and failing,” he sighed. “Now I know that it’s a big misunderstanding– about as big of a misunderstanding as you can make.”

 

“If I could time travel and tell myself to not fuck this one thing up, I would.” 

 

“I fucked it up, too. I could’ve said something.” He slid his hand over to grab Jack’s hand. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay.” They sat there, holding hands in the dark, not needing to say anything.

 

“So you said something about being in love with me?” Jack asked. Bitty could hear the smile in his voice.

 

“Oh my lord, you’re literally my soulmate, Mr. Zimmermann, you cannot tease me for this.”

 

“I’ve been in love with you for months. And I didn’t even know. I thought I’d never have a chance with you.”

 

“Honey, you’ve always had a chance. You always will.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of a post by @onethousandroaches on tumblr.
> 
> It's uh, obviously a little more detailed than the other one in this series? idk man, sometimes ya just get really into a story.
> 
> I like soulmate aus because I feel like the challenge of taking away one problem (finding the person who's right for you) necessitates finding a way to be like "okay but this still wouldn't be an ideal world, because...." and that's super interesting to me!


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